Letter: A Mother's Love

June 30, 2008

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori;
Presiding Bishop, Episcopal Church USA
Episcopal Church Center
815 Second Avenue New York, NY 10017


Dear Bishop Jefferts Schori :

I was distressed to read in my newspaper this morning and subsequently on-line of the pronouncements of the Global Anglican Future Conference as embodied in its Jerusalem Declaration. My first thoughts were for my church and her future. My second thoughts were for you, the primate God has chosen to lead us through this difficult time in the history of the church.

The days and times that lay ahead will no doubt be difficult for you. You must wonder at times why you allowed yourself to be nominated and elected to this post. You must look back fondly on simpler days when you had time to pursue your academic interests and later to minister to the needs of ordinary people.

In those low moments, please remember the words of a very wise woman:

“In Death of the Hired Man, Robert Frost said that “home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.” We all ache for a community that will take us in, with all our warts and quirks and petty meannesses – and yet they still celebrate when they see us coming! That vision of homegoing and homecoming that underlies our deepest spiritual yearnings is also the job assignment each one of us gets in baptism – go home, and while you’re at it, help to build a home for everyone else on earth. For none of us can truly find our rest in God until all of our brothers and sisters have also been welcomed home like the prodigal.”

Those words were relevant, right and powerful when you penned them. They remain so today.

We in the Anglican Community are like a family, and like all families we have differences. Sometimes those differences get out of hand. We may stop speaking to one another or say things in the heat of the moment which are cruel or hurtful. But such transgressions do not make us any less a family.

When the family acts up, I think no one suffers more than the mother. No one yearns more for healing and reconciliation.

The position in which you now find yourself is much like that of mother to an embittered family at the moment. As a member of that family, I’m sorry that we so far have failed to bring you all that you might have hoped for in your presiding episcopacy. Surely, more progress in meeting the needs of the least fortunate would have been preferable to the moderating the bickering of purple-clad prelates squabbling openly in every newspaper on every continent. Still, this is the family which God in his ultimate wisdom has entrusted to you. You are our mother for the next few years, and I hope you will continue to find it in your heart to look past our grievous faults and wrongs and offer us a mother’s love and counsel.

Thank you for all you are doing for the Anglican Communion, the Episcopal Church USA, God’s people and for people everywhere. Take heart that the ultimate destiny of the Church and God’s Creation are in his hands, and so are you.

Yours in Christ’s Love,

Scott Cooper
Parish of St. Andrews, Prineville, Oregon

Address: Find Your Fuel

2008 Commencement Address, Crook County High School
Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper
June 6, 2008, Prineville, Oregon

Superintendent Swisher, Principal Golden, Members of the School Board, Distinguished Members of the Faculty and Graduating Members of the Class of 2008 and friends. It is a privilege and an honor to be here today to offer on behalf of all of Crook County congratulations to the Class of 2008 congratulations on being the 100th graduating class of Crook County High School.

If truth be told, I am here today as the principal’s “second choice.” I know that because Mr. Golden told me so, when he asked me to do this. His exact words were, “I wanted to ask Mike Geisen, but he has some sort of National Teacher of the Year Thing in New York and since you graduated from Crook County High School, I thought maybe you might fill in.”

Thanks, Jim. I’m truly honored. As for the rest of you, I suggest you watch out about May 2009. Since the main qualification for this job appears to be graduating from CCHS, any one of you might be giving this address next year!

I’m telling that story for two reasons. Mainly I wanted the pleasure of watching Mr. Golden’s face turn red. I’m sure no one in the Class of 2008 has never been made to squirm by the principal and his sense of humor. Just remember, Jim, what goes around comes around. Secondly, I wanted an opportunity to mention early on in this speech the incredible achievement of Mike Geisen, a Crook County Middle School Teacher, who was recently named National Teacher of the Year. Mr. Geisen is a great example of the type of educator in which this District is investing, and I know that we have many more years of exceptional graduating classes which will be crossing this stage, well-educated to face the future.

Mr. Geisen nearly didn’t become teacher of the year, you know. To become teacher of the year, he first had to become Oregon Teacher of the Year. The way he found out he was Oregon Teacher of the Year was at an assembly at the Middle School. Local dignitaries were invited to join the State Secretary of Education in announcing that a great honor had been bestowed on a teacher in Crook County. When Mr. Geisen’s name was called, he was sitting near the top of the bleachers, and he came bounding down giving high fives along the way. When he reached the bottom bleacher, he caught his foot and fell face forward . If he hadn’t had the good sense to duck and roll, he probably would have broken his neck, and we wouldn’t be here today talking about him.

But Mr. Geisen did have the good sense to tuck and roll. And as a result, he simply stood up and brushed himself off and went on with the business of accepting his award. And in that one moment, I who hadn’t known Mr. Geisen before, became a big fan. I think Mr. Geisen is a great metaphor for that decision we all have to make at various times in our lives: When things don’t go quite the way we planned, are we going to lay on the floor humiliated or are we going to pick ourselves up and go on to greatness?

Greatness is what I’m hoping for out of the Class of 2008. Certainly, if 100 years of history is any guide, you have no reason to be concerned about whether this institution has given you the education you need to succeed in the world that now lies before you.
I recently met a man who graduated Crook County High School in 1960. Based in California, this man has a doctorate and until recently was head of the world’s largest screening center for prenatal and newborn genetic disease. I wonder what kind of mentor he had in CCHS chemistry that started him down that path?

Not too long ago I read about another Crook County High School graduate who graduated from these halls in 1943. After a distinguished military career in World War II, he went on to become chief judge of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where he continues to preside over the bench with senior status. I wonder how he did in U.S. Government class at CCHS?
A classmate of mine after graduating in 1982, went on to undergraduate studies at Harvard University and then to medical school at Albert Einstein University in New York before returning to Harvard to get a Ph.D. in biology. I didn’t see her for many years after we graduated, until I opened Fortune magazine one day and found an article about her pioneering work mapping the genome of the fruit fly—a project which laid the foundation for genetic mapping of all other species. Today, she has her own lab at Harvard named for her and supervises the work of 15 graduate students. I don’t have to ask what she got in biology. I was there, and let’s just say that her grades were always better than mine.
You see, as you become Crook County high school graduates today you join a long line of distinguished individuals who have made or are currently making a mark on the world. Regardless of what your experiences may have been to date, there is no reason why your potential horizons have to be limited to the rimrocks surrounding Prineville. The world lies before you. How you encounter it, is up to you.

As I look out over this audience today, I wonder what the future holds for each of you. Is the next Bill Gates out there? The next Mother Teresa? The next Les Schwab or a future President of the United States? Your lives are fraught with possibility.

In each of you, there is a special spark. Your teachers and all the rest of us gathered here today have been blowing on that spark for the past 12 years trying to make it jump into flames. Some of you have responded very well and have quite a blaze going. Some of you—well, let’s say that at least you’re still glowing.

What all of us want is to see that spark come alive, but what none of us, except you, really know is what kind of fuel it is that will make that spark jump into flames.

As you leave this place today, your greatest challenge is to find the fuel that that makes you burn. As you walk out of this hall/arena/stadium, take some time to think exactly where it is that your passion lies. Passion will take you places that hard work alone won’t. Passion will help make you the kind of alumnus who will be worthy of being remember by a graduating class 100 years from now.

What do I mean by passion?

Maybe you’re the kind of person who cares about other people: if that’s your passion, devote yourself to that purpose. Go on a mission. Join the Peace Corps. Find a career where people really need someone like you, whether that’s nursing or teaching or practicing medicine, whether it’s meaningful work as a minister, a mental health counselor or a coach.
Or maybe business is what excites you—that opportunity to stand astride the stock market and make it quiver at your every word. If that’s you, go for it: make a better mousetrap and sell, sell, sell. Figure out the next great running shoe, put Phil Knight out of business and endow Oregon State University for once. Whatever you do, do it well. Don’t settle for an 8-5 job. Tell yourself when you walk out of here, I’m going to be the very best at what I do, and then walk out of here and do it.

And if you’re one of those people who isn’t quite sure yet what you want to do, well do whatever you do with passion and zeal and excitement until you get it right. Try and try again. And when things get tough, remember the lessons taught by those who went ahead of you. Einstein nearly failed kindergarten long before he became the smartest man in the world; Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team for “lack of skill,” Henry Ford’s first two automobile companies failed; The Beatles were rejected by a major record label because, its executives said, “We don’t like your sound,” and Mike Geisen rolled his way to the feet of the Oregon Superintendent of Schools, and then picked himself up and walked away to be honored by the President of the United States in the Rose Garden at the White House.

As you enter the Great Big World, Class of 2008, don’t be afraid to dare to do big things. Spread your wings and to show us how high you can fly. Try many things, trip and fall frequently and whenever you do, pick yourself up off the floor and try again.

One hundred years from now, the graduating class of 2108 will be sitting where you are today. They are going to need their heroes, too, and their heroes might as well be you.

Doing The Same Thing But Expecting New Results

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
First published in the Central Oregonian, Prineville, Oregon, June 2008

Somebody called me the other day to complain that the new library director doesn’t believe in alphabetizing. I listened politely, if somewhat incredulously, and made a mental note to ask the library director the next time I saw him what he was up to. I honestly didn’t think much about the matter until the new director happened to show up in my office on another matter. After we concluded our business, I asked him, “David: do you believe in alphabetizing?”

Even as I asked the question, I felt stupid. Of course he alphabetizes. He’s a library director. It’s what they do.

So it was that I listened with some astonishment as the county’s new library director explained to me that the current theory of library and information science is that as long as books are in alphabetical order by author and in numerical order by Dewey Decimal number, title order doesn’t matter. Most readers are capable of finding what they need in a few seconds if the book is in the right general area. He went on to explain that shelving in this fashion saves an incredible amount of staff time, and also allows library staff the freedom and flexibility to shelve series of books together in the order they are intended to be read.

That wasn’t the answer I was expecting, but I had to admit that his observations had some logic to them. After all, I’m sure I’m smart enough to look at five or ten books on a shelf and find the one that I want, regardless of the order they are in. Certainly, my bookshelves at home are in no particular order, and I can find any volume I need with only minimal searching. Still, I couldn’t quite get my mind around this new-fangled theory. After all, books in libraries are SUPPOSED to be alphabetized. Putting books in order is what librarians do, isn’t it?

Finally, I said, “David, you might well be right. There might be a different way to do business, and perhaps we need to consider that at some point in the future. But you’re new around here, and you have a lot of important projects pending. Do you really want to launch a big fight with a public that’s just getting used to you about the order of the books on the shelves? Will you please, as a favor to me and yourself, reconsider your position, which I think is a little too radical for Prineville and Crook County, and put the books back in alphabetical order?”
The library director laughed and agreed that innovation has a time and a place and maybe we’re not ready for big city thinking yet. He agreed to put the books back in order and save “progress” for another day.

I’m not telling that story to rat out the library director as some sort of progressive. He is in fact a great director who has brought the county fresh ideas about how to take our library in exciting new directions involving expanded access to information, better use of technology, more extensive programming and solid theories of collection management. He’s doing well, and he’s going to do even better in the future —as long as he keeps alphabetizing the books.

The point of the story is to point out just how hard it is for us in government and communities to get outside our comfort zone and think in new ways about old problems.

The library director was responding rationally to a long-standing problem in the library: how to put more people to work on important tasks like ordering material, processing material and helping patrons. Shelving, while necessary, prevents these jobs from getting done, and the faster it can be completed, the quicker the library staff gets back to more urgent work. Unfortunately, the library director’s excitement got a little ahead of his constituency’s tolerance for the new and different.

He isn’t the only one in that predicament at the moment.

The May 20 election results suggested that a lot of people are having problems coming to grips with the need to change the reality of how we have been thinking.

No point better illustrates that than the fate of some of my peer commissioners around the state. Of the thirteen incumbent county commissioners in Oregon who running for re-election with opponents, eight lost their seats in a primary battle. Given the supposed overwhelming advantage that incumbency confers in electoral contests, there is definitely a message here.
I know many of the people whom the voters sacrificed. They are hard-working, creative and dedicated to their constituencies. The fact that they lost their seats probably has more to do with voter frustration with rapidly occurring change than any particular thing they did.
My sense of the electorate right now is that having plunged from the glory days of economic supremacy in 2005 and 2006 to a rapidly cooling economy in 2007 and 2008, voters are being driven by fear and discontentment. Most say they say they want “change”. In truth, they don’t change as much as they want things to return to where they were: a time when a house purchase was a guaranteed retirement income, when easy credit allowed us to live well beyond our means, when a labor force shortage guaranteed that if you lost your job you could find one in a few days, when gas was cheap and so was food and so were goods.

The problem with the “good old days” of a few years ago is that they came at a price: housing prices rose far beyond affordability for first-time homebuyers, mounting debt eventually ate into our savings, employers started taking jobs overseas to find labor, our dependence on foreign oil forced us into uncomfortable reliance on unstable political regimes, we began to erode the competitiveness of our own farmers and we fueled the rise of developing nations like China and India who are now competing with us for the very things that have defined our comfortable lifestyle.

We may think we want the “good old days” back, but we aren’t likely to get them and keep them without making some fundamental changes in the way we have been approaching the world.
But therein lies the politician’s quandary: how does he or she convince voters that a little change, adjustment and acceptance of new ways of doing things may be necessary if we all don’t want to destroy the very way of life we prize?

Then again, how does a library director expand his services but still run economically, if we don’t give him the flexibility to try something new once in a while?